No Boomerangs Required!
See my Review of. . .
The Girls Who Come Back
I was drawn to this, the
first of The Beyond series, as the
subject matter is something that I’m sure intrigues us all: What happens when
we die?
Better still, what happens if you try to answer that question within the
setting of a dark fantasy thriller, where scientists are meddling in things
that should best be left alone?
Here’s a clue:
*******
In the backwoods of the Midwest,
Dr Kerry Sullivan is raising the dead. All she wants to do is fix the girls, so
they don’t break again. And all Kate, Kerry’s daughter, wants is to escape this
world, but Kerry keeps dragging her back into it.
What Kerry doesn’t know is that
the girls didn’t come back from the grave alone. Something returned with them.
And now they’re learning they have the power to change the world around them
just by thinking about it.
As Kate starts to exert dominance
over the other girls, tensions rise. Secrets come out. And the girls who came
back don’t want to be fixed. Especially Kate. She wants something else.
Revenge.
*******
Yes, what would you do if you
had the power to resurrect the dead? After all, it’s something that has captured
the imagination of mankind for as long as we’ve been able to conceptualize the
concept of death, and what might occur once our threescore years and ten have
expired.
The thing is, if we ever did
gain the ability to bring people back, should we? Well, L’Erin Ogle answers
that question from a rather provocative angle within, The Girls Who Come Back.
Now, I apologize at the
outset if certain aspects of the review are a little bland. As my readers know
by now, I often sacrifice detail to maintain the element of surprise,
especially if the plot is a corker. And The
Girls Who Come Back promises exactly that. As the blurb hints, the subjects
Dr. Kerry Sullivan brings back from the ‘other side’ are different.
Just how different is up to
you to discover in a cracking thriller that maintains an eerie sense of
tension, by telling the story through the various perspectives of all the
different people involved – staff and girls alike. In doing so, Ogle manages to
weave a subtle mood of sufferance, sterility and inevitability into their
voices. A clever strategy, as that evokes an invasive detachment of emotion.
It’s almost as if the victims accept the inevitability of their situation, as
much as none of the staff really caring what happens to them. They’re
dismissive. Dispassionate. Angry. And that anger is the blue touch paper to the
flame threatening to ignite trouble.
And trouble is most
definitely brewing. Because, while the girls might be dismissive of their
safety, you end up wanting answers. You want closure. You want to know what is
that comes back from the other side with the girls, and how it affects them.
As I say, this is a cleverly
conceived, deep, and provocatively sinister psychological thriller. And
something the darkness in all of us can relate to.
I look forward to seeing how
the story develops.
